You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Engaging with the key debates and issues in a continuously evolving field, Lavinia Bifulco and Vando Borghi bring together contributions from leading social scientists to debate the enduring relevance of public sociology in light of ongoing changes in the social world.
This book promotes a radical alternative impact on youth policy in Europe to overcome the situation of vulnerability and discrimination of a growing number of youngsters in their transition from school to work. It follows a Human Development perspective in using the Capability Approach (CA) as analytical and methodological guiding tool to improve the social conditions of the most socially vulnerable young people in European societies. The mission of the interdisciplinary authors is to expand the actual chances of the young to actively shape their lives in a way they have reason to choose and value. This book is based on the research of the EU Collaborative Project “Making Capabilities Work” (WorkAble), funded by the EU within the Seventh Framework Programme. It is the first empirical project to pursue a justice theory perspective on a European level. It also contributes to a fundamental change in the currently mostly insufficient attempts within the human capital approach to use the labour market to ensure desired lifestyle forms and a secure income for vulnerable youth.
The concept of public action is a magnifying lens for shedding light on the plurality of institutional and social actors interacting in policies. Taking into account a changing social world that is redefining the State and its instruments, it is well suited for picking out transformations that have been affecting European social policies for some twenty years or so now: the territorial reorganization of powers; the spread of a public-private mix in the provision of services; the rise of new forms of collaborative governance; the institutionalization of the European agenda on social investment. This book examines social policies as normative and cognitive devices that contribute to organizing...
This book sheds light on the contradictions underlying the European Union enlargement process, specifically to the Western Balkans, challenging the common assumption that the integration of an extended European space might be possible without mutual transformation of the institutions and agencies involved. Sekulić maps the institutional dimension of the accession process, and analyses how the conditionality principle shapes and constrains the space for negotiation within the EU. Combining ethnographic research with the discourse analysis of the European Commission’s reports and documents from 2008 to 2019 concerning the Western Balkan countries, the book also explores the perceptions and agency of the individuals involved in this process. The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement will be of interest to students and scholars of European integration, the sociology of Europe and the EU, and Eastern European and Western Balkan studies.
This book examines the relevance of modern medicine and healthcare in shaping the lives of elderly persons and the practices and institutions of ageing societies. Combining individual and social dimensions, Planning Later Life discusses the ethical, social, and political consequences of increasing life expectancies and demographic change in the context of biomedicine and public health. By focusing on the field of biomedicine and healthcare, the authors engage readers in a dialogue on the ethical and social implications of recent trends in dementia research and care, advance healthcare planning, or the rise of anti-ageing medicine and prevention. Bringing together the largely separated debate...
By focusing on the interplay between material, social and narrative dimensions of the city, this book examines urban complexity, namely the dynamic and entangled nature of urban issues, and puts forward a notion of the city as an urban texture. Taking an innovative interdisciplinary approach, it perceives the way cities are organized as a restless stratification of materials, meanings and uses, and deals with the interrelationships between actors, places, administrative rationalities and artefacts. It argues that urban fabric is 'manufactured' in this interplay between imagery and practices (of all the stake-holders, including planners, city managers and city users). Illustrated by in-depth ...
This book provides an invaluable overview of neoliberalising trends in urban policies and governance by presenting novel perspectives on municipal entrepreneurship support policies. It seeks to address a current lack of in-depth empirical knowledge of this topic and the reference literature’s silence on local actors agency. The book ’s scholarly debate around the impact of neoliberal capitalism on cities interweaves with empirical observations in the European cities of Barcelona and Milan with a view to examining what lies behind the “start-up city” label, and the way local actors reproduce, contest and re-signify entrepreneurship policies and practices in a highly individualised context. Based on more than sixty interviews with key policy actors, including young beneficiaries, it sheds light on their representations, motivations, intentions and room for manoeuvre in a way that encompasses local specificities in which multi-scalar economic, social, institutional and cultural processes interact. Finally, this book offers new insights into critical entrepreneurship studies and current debates about convergence and divergence trends in urban policies and governance.
This book examines lived experiences of making, inhabiting and appropriating space, in relation to the upscale commercial gentrification of the Milan Chinatown. It inquires about the significance of diverse neighborhoods as emerging multicultural spaces? Are we talking about neighborhood entrepreneurs providing services and entertainment to create local urban culture, or are we talking about political/economic forces in the commodification of ethnic and cultural diversity? Starting from these questions, this book uses innovative visual ethnography and critical urban research to understand the relationship between community-based entrepreneurs, local politics, residents’ sense of belonging, and patterns of city branding strategies in Milan, the fashion capital of Italy. This book is intended for researchers and students in the fields of sociology, anthropology, urban studies, geography, and urban planning. Additionally, it is appropriate for practitioners in the fields of urban planning, housing policies, and community development.
COVID-19 has stressed the condition of radical uncertainty that increasingly characterises our times and compels cities to learn new ways to cope with unexpected global urban challenges. The volume proposes preparedness as a key concept in urban geography, planning, and policy, inviting international scholars to discuss its pros and cons. Firstly, it builds a critical theoretical framework around the concept of preparedness in relation to the COVID-19 effects and other interconnected crises. Then, the authors put at work and redefine preparedness, starting from worldwide surveys, research experiences, public discourses and spatial strategies analysis in Europe and, more extensively, in Italy...
By focusing on the interplay between material, social and narrative dimensions of the city, this book examines urban complexity, namely the dynamic and entangled nature of urban issues, and puts forward a notion of the city as an urban texture. Taking an innovative interdisciplinary approach, it perceives the way cities are organized as a restless stratification of materials, meanings and uses, and deals with the interrelationships between actors, places, administrative rationalities and artefacts. It argues that urban fabric is 'manufactured' in this interplay between imagery and practices (of all the stake-holders, including planners, city managers and city users). Illustrated by in-depth ...